Justice From Justice

It is often said that elections have consequences. And every day the Trump Administration is proving that axiom to be true. One of the great frustrations of the Obama era was that when there was obvious corruption, as during the IRS targeting scandal, nobody got punished.

You will recall that in 2013 conservative tea party groups were harassed and denied important tax status by a politicized IRS. They were denied solely because they were conservative. The tea party groups that were wronged were never compensated.

There’s a new president and a new justice department. And, after years of litigation, DOJ has offered a settlement to tea party and other conservative groups that were targeted by the IRS under the Obama administration. In the settlement, the IRS acknowledges that it violated their rights by applying extra scrutiny and criteria to conservative groups when they applied for nonprofit status.

“The IRS’s use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement yesterday. “It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions.”

I would still like to see someone go to jail for the egregious politicization of a government agency, and perhaps that may still happen. But at least these grassroots organizations are going to be compensated and perhaps made whole again.

Collusion Confusion

Billionaire liberal activist Tom Steyer has launched a multi-million-dollar campaign demanding that Congress impeach President Trump. I saw their first ad on Fox News last night, and found it ironic. Many of the things the ad mentions as impeachable offenses apply not to President Trump but to President Obama.

One allegation made in the ad, and by just about every liberal group over the last 10 months, is that Trump colluded with a foreign power, namely Russia. But as we are finding out, it’s looking more and more like Trump was just about the only person in the 2016 election not to collude with Russia.

But if that is grounds for impeachment, then how does one describe the two years of secret negotiations Obama and Hillary Clinton conducted with America’s avowed enemy Iran? Those negotiations culminated in a deal that resulted in billions of dollars of cash and gold being loaded onto planes and sent under the cover of darkness to Tehran.

That money is currently being used by the Iranian regime to threaten American soldiers and kill U.S. allies.

The terrible deal was submitted to the United Nations and to the Iranian Parliament. But the Obama Administration used every ounce of its political power to prevent it from ever getting an up or down vote in the U.S. Senate.

That’s about as clear a case of collusion with an enemy that you can find. And when it was happening, Republicans in Congress should have not only opposed the deal but labeled it what it was: collusion with an enemy of the United States.

​Bible Museum

A first-of-its-kind Museum of the Bible will open in Washington, D.C. next month.  Located just a few blocks from the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol, I believe the museum will literally attract millions of visitors each year. 

Financed in part by the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, the Museum of the Bible reflects their commitment to excellence in every way.  Carol and I were privileged to have a late night private tour of the facility yesterday.  It is magnificent. 

Of course our country, including Washington, D.C., desperately needs to open the Bible.  In it they will find not only salvation but the answers to corruption and sin of all kinds.  From racism to greed, the Bible has the answers.  The museum is opening at exactly the right time in our history.